Charles Bukowski Quotes

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

Do you hate people?” “I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

what matters most is how well you walk through the fire

You have to die a few times before you can really live.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

My ambition is handicapped by laziness

I wanted the whole world or nothing.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it's too late and there's nothing worse than too late

If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose

That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

Some lose all mind and become soul,insane. some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual. some lose both and become accepted

I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.

Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.

being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.

the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.

those who escape hell however never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that.

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.

For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.

I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.

I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.

People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.

there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. people so tired mutilated either by love or no love. people just are not good to each other one on one. the rich are not good to the rich the poor are not good to the poor. we are afraid. our educational system tells us that we can all be big-ass winners. it hasn't told us about the gutters or the suicides. or the terror of one person aching in one place alone untouched unspoken to watering a plant.

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.

Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.

there is a place in the heart that will never be filled a space and even during the best moments and the greatest times times we will know it we will know it more than ever there is a place in the heart that will never be filled and we will wait and wait in that space.

I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare.

there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.

Baby," I said, "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

you boys can keep your virgins give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.

there is always one woman to save you from another and as that woman saves you she makes ready to destroy

What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting

Life's as kind as you let it be.

my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.

I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.

The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.

I often carry things to read so that I will not have to look at the people.

I will remember the kisses our lips raw with love and how you gave me everything you had and how I offered you what was left of me, and I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window your records your books our morning coffee our noons our nights our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again.

Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.

I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!

Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.

she was consumed by 3 simple things: drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more: youth and beauty

Without literature, life is hell.

some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.

It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.

great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. good human beings save the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. if you read this after I am dead it means I made it.

dogs and angels are not very far apart

in that drunken place you would like to hand your heart to her and say touch it but then give it back.

She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.

She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn't have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.

And yet women-good women--frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep.

Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help.

There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.

I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.

I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.

It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.

Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so.

I'm going, she said. I love you but you're crazy, you're doomed.

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone.

We are Born like this Into this Into these carefully mad wars Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness Into bars where people no longer speak to each other Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings Born into this Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.

Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

you son of a bitch, she said, I am trying to build a meaningful relationship. you can't build it with a hammer, he said.

If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.

and when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?

unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

Anything is a waste of time unless you are fucking well or creating well or getting well or looming toward a kind of phantom-love-happiness.

People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.

I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her even the useless arguments were things ever splendid and the hard words I ever feared to say can now be said: I love you.

she is no longer the beautiful woman she was. she sends photos of herself sitting upon a rock by the ocean alone and damned. I could have had her once. I wonder if she thinks I could have saved her?

Oh, I don’t mean you’re handsome, not the way people think of handsome. Your face seems kind. But your eyes - they’re beautiful. They’re wild, crazy, like some animal peering out of a forest on fire.

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

This is very important -- to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

I sit here drunk now. I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here without committing murder or being murdered; without having ended up in the madhouse. as I drink alone again tonight my soul despite all the past agony thanks all the gods who were not there for me then.

Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it. On these grounds a good fuck is not to be entirely scorned. But that's the result of a chance meeting too. You're damned right. Drink up. We'll have another.

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?

There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die.

The Laughing Heart your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.

Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art Bullfighting can be an art Boxing can be an art Loving can be an art Opening a can of sardines can be an art Not many have style Not many can keep style I have seen dogs with more style than men, although not many dogs have style. Cats have it with abundance. When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style. Or sometimes people give you style Joan of Arc had style John the Baptist Jesus Socrates Caesar García Lorca. I have met men in jail with style. I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail. Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done. Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water, or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.

I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, 'I’m going to pee.' hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking; talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3am; being told you snore; hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always carring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side and her doing the same; sleeping together